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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27689504">cavities digging deep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmedic/pseuds/softmedic'>softmedic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Smile For Me (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Dental Malpractice, Dr. Boris Habit has ADHD, Gen, all information has been gleaned from his friend’s rants and the boris habit wiki page, author has never played smile for me</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:15:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,179</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27689504</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmedic/pseuds/softmedic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing really goes right for Habit.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Implied Kamal Bora/Dr. Boris Habit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>cavities digging deep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=francis+%3A%29">francis :)</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>happy birthday francis. you go you funky little lesbian &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His father’s smiles are wilting. </p>
<p>Every time Habit sees his father’s expressions—a foreboding frown with deep-set forehead wrinkles, and a shadow over his eyes—he forgets more and more how bright his teeth were. Shiny, white things: dazzling when formed around the curled lips of a person, but the absence of them leaves a profound darkness.</p>
<p>In true superhero fashion, Habit sets out to be a destroyer of frowns. A beaming light in a fog of black, like a lighthouse. His smile could lift faces from miles away!</p>
<p>So, he thinks about it, and thinks about it some more, and decides that the tried and true recipe for smile-healing is flowers. They’re so pretty; who doesn’t like flowers?</p>
<p>Better yet, he has a secret weapon. His tooth lily. It’s sad to see it go, but they need it more. </p>
<p>He gives it kisses, tender and dear. Its petals are its own sort of smile, the way the lily unfurls around his scritching fingers and he almost-purrs. But unfortunately, his dad walks on his surprise-gift, and it ruins the surprise. </p>
<p>He got so mad he took Habit’s smile away. </p>
<p>Maybe he picked the wrong gift. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Apparently his dad really needs Habit’s smile, because he doesn’t give it back. </p>
<p>It makes the people at school sneer at him, all smirks and small little smiles. There are no toothy, open-faced ones, and he thinks, <em> what’s the point of having a good smile if you’re not gonna use it? </em> It doesn’t make sense. </p>
<p>At least he has his coat. It’s soft and fuzzy, and it’s the color of his tooth lily. He squeezes the fabric every now and then, just like he does his hair. Everytime he fidgets with his hair, though, his mom pulls his wrist away and tells him to knock it off or it’ll all fall out. So he stops, because that already happened to his teeth.</p>
<p>He’s unlovable for his teeth. People remind him everyday. They tug on his lips to see the punctures of his grin and touch with their velvet hands. He drips tears like his watering can, and laments to his lily at home as he pours her a drink. </p>
<p>“Oh, lily,” he says, the sound withering like a frail flower. </p>
<p>His lily echoes the sound right back. Its ends are charred and heavy, and his small scritches scrub off flakes of what’s remaining. Habit knows it won’t be long until it shrivels. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>He heads into his teenage years too loud, too tall, too gangly, and too sharp around the edges. </p>
<p>His parents are even sharper as they push against him. They want him to be a doctor. He can’t think of a more miserable profession, being surrounded by sterile hospital walls and inhaling the fumes of patients’ last dying breaths. </p>
<p>It isn’t flowers that bloom all over his skin after every fight. Habit’s never been good at volume control and his parents remind him at every turn. When his dad quiets him, his teeth fall like words from his mouth, or the petals from his precious lily.</p>
<p>It’s effective. </p>
<p>Later, in the darkness of his room, he cries to his lily. It hears his song like no one else will, and he presses one last feeble kiss to it. He doesn’t hear the door creak open until it’s too late. </p>
<p>“What are you doing?” His mother’s voice is like a lightning whip. His heart pounds in his chest. </p>
<p>“We told you to stop with this foolishness,” she spits, and walks over to where Habit is frozen in place. He starts caressing his flower again before she flicks his hand away. </p>
<p>His mother picks up the pot and inspects it, before she chucks it at the ground. A wail rips from Habit’s throat while his mother squashes the plant underneath her foot. The stem snaps in half. </p>
<p>A minute later, the room is empty. The light from the hallway frames his trembling form as he curls his finger around the shredded flower. He pinches his eyes shut. He could have stopped this. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Dentistry seemed like the right choice. He <em> fooled </em> himself. </p>
<p>His patients detest him. His fingers are too big to fit in people’s mouths and everyone declares that he’s creepy. Is his smile off? Is it not good enough for them? He’s trying to keep his smile but it’s hard with the bright lights and the skin-crawling rubber of the gloves and the people moving in and out. He knows he could do better.</p>
<p>For his dwindling years as a dentist, he treads a careful line. A permeating depression plants in his heart with every ungrateful person whose teeth he refines. The people dismiss his frustrated concerns for their smiles, and wince at his elated walkthroughs of dental science. But he can’t fault them, because they don’t know any better; they’ve never had broken smiles. If only he could take care of them. </p>
<p>It happens when Habit sees a smile glowing with potential. Their teeth are straight and even, and they have a grin wider than the biggest smile in the world. He works away at them happily, but can’t get this one spot right. So he tries again until he’s scrubbed their gums right off, and they’re crying with pain, and they won’t <em> listen to him </em> when he tells them to stop. </p>
<p>He quits soon thereafter. </p>
<p>This time, he knows what went wrong. Habit should have used anesthetic. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Flower Kid is a menace. </p>
<p>There is one thing Habit has wanted to do his whole life. Just one. He wants to make people smile. But he wasn’t doing it right—he’s so <em> silly </em>, thinking flowers and dentistry were enough—so he concocted the perfect recipe for ultimate happiness everywhere. </p>
<p>Then the Flower Kid comes in and crushes his hard work, as if making smiles is as easy as willing them to form. </p>
<p>The messages he sends them don’t work. He begs the other Habiticians to save their smiles, but they’ve spread like the plague, and Habit can feel the soils of his work seeping through his fingertips. He poured his love into his Habitat, and it takes just one person to tear through it all. How is that fair?</p>
<p>He faces his last defeat when Flower Kid confronts him at the balcony. There is no big event. His plans fall through.</p>
<p>Just like his teeth. </p>
<p>His parents would not be proud of him. Flower Kid’s would be. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Nothing really goes right for Habit.</p>
<p>He lost his teeth. He lost his tooth lily. He failed as a doctor; he failed as the overseer of the Habitat. He has not made everyone smile with a bio-weapon of happiness.</p>
<p>There’s nothing to stop him from saying he’s a failure of a man. </p>
<p>But when he’s surrounded by flowers of his own picking, or greets smiling customers at the flower shop downtown, or wakes up to twirl his fingers around Kamal‘a soft hair, and he thinks, <em> nothing goes my way</em>?</p>
<p>He stops. He looks at the tooth lily on his nightstand.</p>
<p>And he thinks, <em> well, maybe they have.  </em></p>
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